


Enough

by Sampika



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 02:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12379332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sampika/pseuds/Sampika
Summary: Tony thinks. He thinks about his brain, how it works, and all the bitter memories stored inside it.





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as just some psychoanalysis writing, partly about depression, for a class for school (hence the somewhat odd opening and metaphors) but it turned into a Tony Stark character study because I was watching Iron Man again.

The human brain is complex. It works and it processes. It malfunctions, it shuts down. It dreams, it envisions, it imagines, it represses and rewinds and fast forwards. It works in a series of firing neurons and chemical reactions and balances and imbalances, it creates and it forgets and it remembers.

Inside each brain is a universe of it’s own, and there are over seven billion universes on this little planet called Earth. Some know only luxury, simplicity, working at a minimum and never thinking very hard. Some are happy, and good, and pure. Others were formed around poverty, discrimination, prejudice. But in the end, they function just like all the others. And they persevere and rise up and _grow._

These universes are all solitary, yet together. They merge with spoken words, overlap in the little things like shared memories and experiences. So many of them run their course on this earth, full of ups and downs (though the good things tend to outweigh the bad ones). These universes are full of potential, and love, and joy, and they blossom and they become so much more than what they were when they first started out. They are bright and lively and full of little differences and quirks that make them unique; one in seven billion.

But for some - those universes plagued by diseases out of their control, seven percent of seven billion - they see the truth for what it is: they are all alone. It doesn’t matter how much they overlap or share or try to make others see what they go through, because every universe is unique, and the others will _never_ understand what they cannot feel. They are made sluggish by the disease until they lag behind the rest of them, crawling at their own pace while the world of seven billion universes moves along without them.

The disease is nothing more than a chemical imbalance; a shift in the equation, a crack in the lens, a smear on the canvas. But it causes so much harm. It holds onto the bad with an iron grip, recites it like a broken record, while at the same time taints nearly all the good. It holds tight, it will fight to keep light away. The universe becomes dark, dreary, full of scars that don’t seem like they will ever heal. It becomes weary, idle, depressed. Its stars and planets cease to turn, strands of the building blocks of dark matter fray and snap, and the universe just wants to _end._

Of those seven percent, some keep going. They keep going, even though the stars have stopped burning so bright and the planets have stopped spinning and there isn’t really _life_ there anymore. 

Others try to bring themselves to an end.

Because those seven billion universes, these seven percent - all of them have a god or goddess of their own. The controller, the one that transports their own little universe around the planet and interacts with the seven billion others. They’re the ones that make the choice. 

Seven percent of universes are dark, and it doesn’t sound like a lot. But seven percent of seven billion is four hundred and ninety million.

Out of all of them, Tony Stark wonders sometimes if his universe is the darkest of them all. 

He knows deep down that it probably isn’t, but it isn’t hard to think that it is.

And sure, his universe creates some of the most wondrous and innovative things, things nobody else would ever even think to dream of. It works flawlessly in that regard, and it can’t stop creating. Because at his core, Tony only ever wanted to help. He wanted to save lives, and do what was best, and make the earth better to make other people’s universes brighter. 

He should have known that giving them his light would take it away from himself. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 

But he would continue to give up his light until he had none left to give, that he was certain of. 

He wanted to put light in other’s lives since he was young, barely more than a toddler. So naturally, that was where his pile of problems started. His father hardly ever shared light, and seemed more prone to snuffing it out than anything else. At the time, Tony wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not.

Tony tended to reflect on his darkness a lot, these days. The disease that wormed it’s way into the inner workings of his universe never let him forget for more than a few hours, and that was on a good day. Trapped in the isolation of his mind, he had no choice but to let it whisper dark thoughts and taunting reminders; the voice that never let him rest. 

It reminded him of his own voice repeating _“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,”_ to a disappointed Rhodey at an award ceremony, and tried not to let it show since he’d been smack dab in the middle of a gambling match that he probably never should have gone near.

It reminded him of lives lost at the brutality of his own weapons, in fire and dust and blood and gunfire. Of Yinsen, and how he spoke so fondly of his family, and how Tony only learned that they no longer walked the earth as Yinsen lay dying in front of him. It never let him let go of the pain that flooded his heart at his complete and utter helplessness, it never let him forget the way the light faded from his friend’s eyes as he told him, _“Don’t waste your life, Stark.”_

It reminded him of Obadiah, and the frigid chill of fear and burning rage of anger as he lay paralyzed and helpless to his godfather’s whims; the ice and fire competing, blending, melding into the bitter taste of betrayal in his mouth as his heart was ripped from his chest. 

Or of the crushing weight that fell onto his shoulders the moment the words left his mouth - _“I am Iron Man.”_ The press, the country, the president, the entire _world_ looked to him to fix every problem, to create every solution, to do the things that hundreds of countries working together couldn’t do. It became the albatross around his neck, and it held guilt and anger and resentment and the feeling of being less than adequate for the job. Guilt, because no matter how hard he tried he _couldn’t_ solve all the problems; and anger that they expected it of him anyway. The feeling of his failure choked him when he tried despite knowing it was a lost cause, and got nowhere regardless of his efforts. 

It reminded him of _“You’ll lose. You’ll lose,”_ and a defiant mouthful of blood spat his way as he wondered just what he’d done to have to atone for his father’s sins and leftover, decade-old vendettas. 

_“If you make God bleed, then people will cease to believe in him.”_

Because of course, the planet had made him take up that mantel the moment he told them he was Iron Man. They seemed to think he was invincible. _The Invincible Iron Man,_ a magazine reporter once called him. They never stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, Tony Stark was just a man. That Iron Man and Tony Stark were one and the same, and not separate entities, and that Iron Man was just as vulnerable as the person inside the armor. Yet they thought Iron Man could hoist the world upon his shoulders and not feel the weight. But no. The weight was _suffocating._ Atlas can't hold the world up forever, but he would be damned if he didn’t try. 

It reminded him of the taste of coconut and metal and the sprawling black veins of poison in his bloodstream. Of knowing that his universe would soon be forcibly destroyed, but _he was not done giving his light to the others that needed it more._ The nauseating churning in his stomach as he tried to find the words to tell Pepper, and the sour taste of guilt when he only managed to shove them further apart. It reminded him that he had wanted to give Rhodey the suit in a peaceful manner, in the form of a few paragraphs in his will. He tried to forget the self loathing he’d felt while writing it, at how he couldn’t even give it to his friend face to face, or say his goodbye’s properly.

The internalized hate grew as he watched Rhodey fly away from the destroyed rubble of his sitting room.

His mind would remind him of all the the ice cold dread that numbed his veins as a portal opened in the sky above his tower. Of the Chitauri pouring through into his world, the world he had to protect. And it reminded him that he was prepared to go to a cold void of a grave, billions of light years from his earth just to keep them safe. The fear and panic and _isolation_ that seized his heart as blue sky so suddenly changed to a blanket of star-dotted pitch, a looming ship floating out in the dark as the harbinger of the onslaught on his home. 

It reminded him how, in that moment, when the last reserves of air left his lungs empty and he could feel his chest tighten and his heart stop, he had been okay with dying. The world would be safe, the aliens destroyed, Loki captured. So he had been prepared to die, to let the last clinging remains of his life vanish in the vast abyss of space. To become legend, myth, and eventually non existent even in the memories of those he had saved. 

And then, when that raging roar had jump started his fragile, damaged heart once more, his mind wouldn’t let the tightness leave his chest, or the image of stars and void and the enemy ship leave his eyes. It was burned into his retinas, and he had to repeat _I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive_ over and over in his head like a mantra just to convince himself it was real. 

_“We won”,_ Steve had told him. We won. _“When I went under the world was at war. When I woke up they said we won - they didn’t say what we lost.”_ We won, Steve had told him, but he didn’t look him in the eyes as he had said it. Because now Tony would have to live in a world where there were casualties in this war. He couldn’t leave behind that guilt with his death. Instead, he had to shoulder the weight. 

It was starting to get too heavy to carry, but still, he would try.

And even further still, his mind would remind him of his demons. Demons he created. How, on that night back in Bern, he had left Kilian waiting on that rooftop all night, and never let the thought cross his mind that maybe it wasn’t the nicest thing to do. So when he discovered what AIM had turned out to be, who the Mandarin _really_ was, could he even be surprised? Maybe a little, because only the insane would turn to terrorism after being stood up, but still. It was _his fault,_ Tony’s mind told him, _convinced_ him of that fact. If he had been a bit more considerate that night, would Pepper have had to suffer? And Happy? And the president? Would Mia have died? And all of those who couldn’t regulate the extremis modification?

His mind would whisper to him about Ultron - his fault, his fault - and how many lives the AI had taken. So much destruction and death, and that blood was left on his hands. The world should have hated him for that longer than they did, he thought.

It reminded him of Charles Spencer, and the look of hatred and loss and grief in his mother’s eyes as she pressed a photo of the boy into his chest and told him how he died. Tony couldn’t help but wonder what the boy had felt in his dying moments. Did having a building come crashing down on top of you feel anything like the isolated, lonely cold of space? Did Charlie think the same dying thoughts as he had? And what about the others, that long list of the dead, had they felt the same? Had thought the same things as they died as a result of Ultron’s fury and Tony’s mistakes?

Helmut Zemo was another his mind like to remind him of. He wondered if the loss of Zemo’s family felt anything like the loss of his own. But somehow, he doubted it. To lose a loving father, wife, and child was nothing like losing a half rate drunk of a father and a mother who only stood by and watched and did nothing as his father took his drunken rage out on Tony.

And because Ultron was his fault, Zemo was his fault, too. Rhodey would probably scold him for thinking like that, but he couldn’t help but listen to the dark whispers of his mind when they told him it was true. It was a domino effect leading straight back to him. Tony’s fear led to Ultron’s fury, which led to Zemo’s need of revenge, which led to Barnes being framed, which led to Steve working outside the law, which led to Siberia, which led to Tony watching that video, which led to the battle and half the team’s imprisonment at the Raft, and the horrible sting of betrayal as a red white and blue shield pierced his mechanical heart. He thought of Rhodey falling to the ground as he tried to walk again, and could only blame himself for his friend’s paralysis.

And while his mind told him that all of that was all his fault, it also fed the bitterness that came from knowing Steve had known. Steve had _known_ Barnes killed his parents, and _he never told him._ It was betrayal, as was Natasha helping Steve and Barnes get away, and Clint’s “rescue” of Wanda from the compound, and the whole damned fiasco of a fight at Leipzig. Individually, the betrayals weren’t so bad, but stack them all on top of each other in the span of about 48 hours and it was the equivalent of several daggers to the back.

Dark, dark, dark, his brain, his universe, it was so full of regret and guilt and self loathing and bitterness now that he had given so much of his light to the rest of the world. And yet they still kept asking _more_ of him - didn’t they know that he only had so much light to give? Would they leave nothing for him? Would they drain him dry until all that was left was a shell of who he started as? The weight of their wants, the weight of his duty to them, it was all _so much,_ and Tony had been carrying that weight for so, _so_ long. 

Sometimes it felt like the world tested his limits, like an elastic rope. They kept pulling, and pulling, but eventually it was bound to snap. The years had built up tension, so much tension. It left him broken inside. If brokenness was a form of art, well, he would be a masterpiece.

DUM-E let out an alarmed beep as Tony let his glass of scotch slip from his fingers. It shattered at his feet, fragments scattered around him with the last of will.

Because Atlas finally let the world finally fall off his shoulders. The dam cracked. The rope snapped. The candle reached the end of it’s wick. 

He’d had _enough._

**Author's Note:**

> I've left the ending ambiguous for you guys - how do you see Tony reacting when he finally snaps?


End file.
